Happiness and its underlying (epi) genetics

I have written previously about the difference between a ‘happy’ life and a ‘meaningful’ life. To be clear, when positive psychology researchers talk about happiness, they distinguish between hedonic happiness {or happiness that is more affective (more positive than negative emotions overall) and cognitive (satisfaction with life) in nature} and eudiamonic happiness {or happiness that is more behavioral (acting morally and virtuously), social (having deep and meaningful relationships and motivational (having a sense of purpose) in nature}.

The difference between hedonic happiness and eudiamonic happiness is not mere semantic nit-picking; it has important real –world consequences. For example, I have also written previously about the relationship between happiness, social connections and health and shown that important health outcomes are dependent on happiness, where the relationship is mediated by social relationships. At that time, I did not differentiate between hedonic and eudiamonic happiness, because the relevant research and evidence was lacking.

Today I wish to highlight the differential effect hedonic and eudiamonic happiness have on health and how this may be mediated by the different role social relationships and money play in guaranteeing happiness and how that may differentially affect the underlying neuroendocrine and immune systems.

To be fair, there are many paths to happiness. For hedonic happiness, it is clear that the mandate is to optimize and maximize positive emotions in the moment, and lessening negative emotions. However, focusing too much on one’s own happiness may have the paradoxical effects of making you feel affectively happy, but disconnected from having meaningful relationships or purposes in life as you chose the easy way out of most dilemmas. Similarly, wealth or income has shown to be positively related with life satisfaction component of hedonic happiness, as the feelings of satisfaction with life may largely be comparative and relative in nature (how well we are doing as compared to others). This social comparison effect may focus us on being netter than the joneses to feel satisfied, but is also counterproductive to genuine social relationships.

On the other hand, having deep and meaningful social relationships and working towards a cause dear to one’s heart and; maximizing ones growth and unfolding , even while venturing out of one’s comfort zone; are all indicative of an eudiamonic life- but not necessarily leading to positive emotions in the present (love hurts!). this way of life may also be deeply satisfying (at another level) and give rise to feelings of happiness and integrity, and a life well lived, and may feel the same as hedonic happiness, but has different effects on physical and psychological health.

There has been some growing research literature, that shows that hedonic and eudiamonic research have different effects on body. Ryff et al, for eg., Showed that higher eudiamonic happiness was associated with lower cortisol (the stress hormone), lower pro-inflammatory cytokines and lower cardiovascular risk ( less risk of heart attack). They however did not find any beneficial effects of hedonic happiness on health indicators.

This line of research has been extended recently and even shown to have epigenetic roots. Fredrickson et al, showed that ‘people with high levels of hedonic well-being showed up-regulated expression of a stress-related conserved transcriptional response to adversity (CTRA) involving increased expression of proinflammatory genes and decreased expression of genes involved in antibody synthesis’ while those who had high levels of eudiamonic happiness showed the exact reverse epigenetic profile- lesser expression of genes involved in stress/ inflammation/ lowered immunity.

So it boils down to how your genes are expressed! A focus on hedonic happiness may give you a sense of well-being, but will still take a toll on your health by acting almost as if you were pshyscially and mentally stressed. On the other hand, living a life with purpose, meaning and relationships, will lead to a different gene expression profile – providing you with physical and metal resilience, immunity and real good health, apart from of course a subjective sense of well-being, as in the hedonic case.

To me the difference lies in the mediating role of having rich and deep social relationships. Many studies [pdf][pdf] show that loneliness leads to bad health outcomes viz the mediating effects of cortisol, cytokines etc. and that both chronic and acute loneliness has similar effects to chronic and acute stressors and compromises immunity and health. Also, social relationships provide resilience and good immunity.

We have already seen in an earlier post that happiness may affect health by the mediating role of social relationships. The biological chain underlying that is also becoming more apparent day by day. Apparently, eudiamoinc happiness leads to good social relationships, which leads to less (perceived) chronic and acute stress and which in turn leads to less cortisol, cytokines etc. and less up regulation of stress, inflammation and lowering immunity related genes.

Thus, leading a good life, is not just important from a moral and ethical point of view, it also makes you feel happy and integral, and also leads to better health outcomes. A sole focus on hedonic happiness , on the other hand, may have paradoxical effects , in terms of increasing perceived well-being, but being in fact stressful and harmful to body’s immunity.

These findings may also explain why though older people feel greater hedonic well-being, by experiencing more positive emotions and lesser negative emotions over time as they age, most of them still suffer from poorer immunity and deteriorating health as they suddenly find life meaningless post-retirement and find themselves more and more lonely as they lose touch with their peers (mostly as a result of many peers dying early). So for older adults who really want to keep good health- develop new relations with younger people, don’t feel lonely even if all of your peers have left the building and find second or third passion and calling in life.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Author

Sandeep Gautam’s passion lies in all things psycho and neuro. His warped persona consists of a psychologist’s mind trapped in an engineer’s body. While his day job requires him to lead and manage software development teams in a networking and telecommunications giant; he prefers to moonlight as a psychology and neuroscience blogger at The Mouse Trap http://the-mouse-trap.com/, The Psychology Today and The Creativity Post.
A computer engineer by education, a telecom professional by vocation and a psychologist on vacations (and on weekends and weeknights), he has tried his hand and failed miserably at poetry, entrepreneurship and convincing his wife that psychology has given him a unique and practical edge when it comes to understanding women and relationships.
Programmer, poet, philosopher; and a perpetual learner and advocate of positive psychology he can be found as @sandygautam on most social networking services.

Sandeep Gautam’s passion lies in all things psycho and neuro. His warped persona consists of a psychologist’s mind trapped in an engineer’s body. Whil. . .